


The End is Where We Start From

by TheVelvetCoatedWonder



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (mild), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Post-World War II, Retrospect, Retrospect: A Klance Zine, Whump, Zine, coming of age after the war is tough boys, vintage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 01:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21437620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVelvetCoatedWonder/pseuds/TheVelvetCoatedWonder
Summary: Lance looked up, seeing the man beside him with new eyes. He was so young, with his round cheeks and baby hairs just beginning to brush his neck and forget the army-issued clippers. And yet, he’d come of age in fire and filth; he carried the same bone-aching world-weary spirit Lance did. And somehow, that was more comforting than all the other reassurance Lance had received.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Kudos: 44





	The End is Where We Start From

**Author's Note:**

> I was chosen to be a writer for the 1940s in Retrospect: A Vintage Klance zine. It was an amazing opportunity and a lovely experience, please check our tags to see some of the other writers' BEAUTIFUL work. I was actually very excited to get this time period because I love the beat poets, which came about in this time period, and I drew on Howl a lot for inspiration while writing this. The title for this piece comes from a T.S. Eliot poem, though it's not The Wasteland but rather Little Gidding.
> 
> Please enjoy, it's lovely to see you all again, and you'll hear from me again soon, though it won't be for Voltron!

Lance looked down at the blank college enrollment sheet before him and knew he couldn’t do it. The war had taken all his choices, and now that it had ended the U.S. seemed in a big hurry to make up for lost time. Lance thought it was too bad he didn’t feel the same kind of urgency. He looked up at the coiffed woman behind the Student Admissions counter waiting with pursed lips to receive the rest of Lance’s life. 

“I’m going for a smoke,” he said, resisting the urge to run a hand through his gelled hair. He didn’t need another mess on his hands. 

“You can’t take the paper with you,” she replied, lacquered nails reaching to take it back.

“That’ll be just fine with me.” Lance muttered, already pulling his pack of smokes from his jacket and patting down his pants pockets for a light. 

He trotted through the gilded lobby still looking for his light and was so engrossed in his search he nearly tripped over the young man on the steps outside the door. He was young, with a set of dog tags hanging out of his shirt, and he looked as overwhelmed as Lance felt.

“Got a light?” Lance asked, giving up on the search for his own.

The man reached into the pocket of his military issue aviator jacket, handing a matchbook over to Lance with a chuckle, “You too, huh?”

Lance cocked his head and shook out his match, taking a deep drag to appreciate the nicotine, “Me too what?” 

“I’ve faced down incoming kamikaze less terrifying than those women upstairs.”

Lance laughed, feeling like there was someone on his side for the first time that day. He sat down beside the guy and stuck out his hand, “The name’s Lance. Lance McClain.”

“Keith Kogane,” he replied, returning Lance’s shake with a firm, warm grip.

“What are you here for?” Lance asked, staring out over the manicured lawn before them that felt just as phony as the welcome sign over the double doors.

Keith shrugged, shoulders rolling and hands in his jacket pockets, “Same as you, I bet. The doctor’s been saying I’m hale and hardy for a while now, and my brother finally chased me off his couch. So now I’m here,” he plucked his cigarette from his lips, “Looking to better myself through further education.”

He said it like a war vet might say there was a wonderdrug for shellshock-- leery and full of disdain.

Lance chuckled, blowing smoke from his nose, “I wasn’t chased off my family’s couch, I just couldn’t stand to be there for another minute.” He looked over at Keith, “My mother was upset I didn’t want to halve the farm with my brother and order a house from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue.”

Keith snorted, “And what would be wrong with that?”

“I mean,” Lance sighed, “What would be right?”

His stair companion hummed, scraping his shoe across the marble step, “You’d get peace. Quiet. Here you’ll be ‘one of the war vets’ for the next four years… but there you’d never have to think about the war again.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lance huffed, “I can’t stop thinking about the war.” 

He looked out over the lawn, artificed in the way so many things felt these days, “Everyone just expects for me to shrug it off. Like it’s a winter coat I don’t need anymore now that the sun’s out again.”

A silence fell between them, weighty and intentional like night watch on the front line.

“Everyone keeps saying it’s over,” Lance whispered, “But I still feel like I haven’t left the battlefield.” 

He continued, voice growing thick, “I can’t pretend like the last three years didn’t happen. The U.S. Army carted me off. They gave me a gun and a set of dog tags and this-- this cloying sense of paranoia. Now, everyone seems to think I can make the nightmares go away. I should just be able to put all this behind me. But, but it won’t stay put, it keeps creeping up on me.”

He looked down at his hands, “I don’t know how to leave the war. I don’t know how to leave.”

Lance’s outpour ebbed and the birds kept chirping. A group of girls on the lawn called out their hellos, uncaring of the quiet desperation unfolding beyond them. The sun was shining, there was a pleasant breeze, and at that moment Lance couldn’t imagine a worse way to feel.

“Do any of us know how to leave the war?” Keith asked, “Oh sure, you walk off the battlefield, leave the island or dock the carrier… but you carry it with you. The war’s with all of us now.”

Lance looked up, seeing the man beside him with new eyes. He was so young, with his round cheeks and baby hairs just beginning to brush his neck and forget the army-issued clippers. And yet, he’d come of age in fire and filth; he carried the same bone-aching world-weary spirit Lance did. And somehow, that was more comforting than all the other reassurance Lance had received.

Keith took a drag on his cigarette, “We all came back with bombshells under our eyelids and a head full of minefields. And to make up for it, we get a big ol’ check letting us do whatever we want.” He shook his head, “Uncle Sam made us a punching bag and now he’s offering us candy to shut up and go away.”

Lance barked a laugh, “That’s it exactly.”

He gestured vaguely at the building behind them, “That lady upstairs told me I have to take English and American Literature. We’re supposed to learn about all of mankind’s greatest sufferings like we didn’t just live through mankind’s greatest suffering yet. It’s crazy, right?”

Lance looked over at Keith, “Are they crazy? Or am I the crazy one?”

“If you’re crazy then I’m off my rocker, too,” Keith stood up, gesturing to the lawn, “They expect us to do all these-- these pleasantries. Tonight, there’s a dance, tomorrow, a picnic on the lawn. They just want us to go out there and party and make friends. But I don’t want friends. I had friends. A whole squad. And we sure as hell didn’t have a picnic to get to know each other.”

Keith shook his head, “What do I want with a picnic?”

Lance chuckled, “Would you object to a sandwich from the soda shop on the main street?”

Keith threw him a puzzled look. 

“Come on,” Lance grinned, “I saw a soda shop near the bus stop on my way in. We can ditch the registration office and get a bite to eat. I’m starving, all this indecision has given me an appetite.”

Keith returned Lance’s grin, a small upturn at the corner of his mouth, “Well then,” he said, heading not for the gates at the front of the lawn but for a Ford with its top down parked in front of the steps, “Let’s go.”

Lance stared as Keith hopped over the side of his car. He had to pick his jaw off the ground before he followed the other vet, not hopping the side as Keith had but almost reverently lowering himself onto the sun warmed leather seats.

“You can drive,” he breathed, one hand running over the wooden interior of the dashboard.

Keith snorted, unimpressed with Lance’s wide-eyed wonder, “Yeah, you can’t? I learned on an army truck and now I’m making monthly payments on this thing. Believe it or not though, I think the truck might have been easier.”

Lance spent the short drive discreetly watching Keith handle the gearshift with an easy confidence Lance envied. Lance thought to himself that maybe he wouldn’t mind learning some driving skills himself.

The shop was hopping with college kids crowded around the jukebox and the counter. Lance and Keith took their own seats at the soda counter, with Lance taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves at the heat of the grill.

Keith, who’d slung his own jacket over the back of the chair, smirked at Lance, “You don’t have a girl on your arm?”

Lance blinked at him in confusion before realizing Keith meant Lance’s lack of ink. Lance had gone the entirety of the war without getting any tattoos, leaving his arm, a popular spot for sweetheart’s names, empty.

“Ah no,” he ran a hand through his hair sheepishly, “I didn’t get a girl before the war started and haven’t really been in the mood for romance since I got back.” He narrowed his eyes, “Keith, do you have a tattoo?”

“Yeah, I do,” he replied, “But it’s not of any girl I’m sweet on.” He rolled up his sleeve, exposing the delicate inner flesh of his upper arm, “It’s my family name in the given Korean characters.”

“Oh wow,” Lance breathed, leaning in close, “You’re Korean?”

“A quarter,” Keith shrugged, rolling sleeve down, “American enough that the war office didn’t hold it against me.”

Lance nodded, knowing well the kinds of discrimination the war office had made in the wake of Pearl Harbor. 

“Hey boys,” They were interrupted by the arrival of a waitress, “What can I get for you today?” She batted her eyelashes at Lance and Keith.

“I’ll have a burger and fries, extra onions,” Keith said.

“And I’ll have the BLT.” Lance squinted at the soda fountain menu hung up on the wall, “And a strawberry malt.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” the waitress popped her notepad back in an apron pocket, “We’ll get those started for you right away.” 

She left with a wink.

“A strawberry malt?” Keith asked, “I didn’t know I was sitting next to a six year old.”

“Hey,” Lance objected, “Real men don’t deny themselves the simple pleasures in life.”

The waitress returned, setting down their drinks, and Keith watched Lance lick strawberry malt off his top lip as he nodded sagely, “You got that right.”

Their waitress came back to check on them far more often than was necessary, obviously feeling sweet on the two new faces before her. Lance and Keith ended up spinning their chairs around so they faced the restaurant at large rather than her attentions, but that really wasn’t much better.

Keith and Lance now faced the kids at the jukebox. While the youngsters at the jukebox might have been the same age as the two vets, Lance felt so much older than them. World-weary in a way that left him reluctant to refer to the dancers as anything but kids. Calling them adults felt wrong when they wore their letterman jackets with such pride and tossed french fries bought with daddy’s allowance across the table. Lance wasn’t a kid, hadn’t been for three years now, and the idea of labelling Keith with such a childish moniker was laughable. They were all the same age, and yet there were generations between them.

“Gosh, you know, I feel like the oldest person in here,” Keith sighed, voicing Lance’s thoughts out loud.

Lance laughed, “Don’t I know it.” He pointed to two old men in the corner sharing a quiet game of checkers and ignoring the rowdiness at the front of the shop, “I feel more like those two.”

He sighed, leaning his elbows on the counter, “I don’t know though, for all its… abrasiveness, there’s something kind of nice about it.” Lance watched some girl snap her bubblegum at the strapping young man leaning over her, “It kinda feels like the mess hall right after a leave announcement.”

Keith snorted and took a sip of his soda. The jukebox was playing upbeat swing music, full of big band pep and raucous energy, but Keith’s feet didn’t tap to the beat, and he didn’t feel the itch to join in on the rhythm like he used to.

Lance watched Keith out of the corner of his eye, seeing Keith’s shoulders stoop with the weight of all he’d lost. He was reminded of that feeling earlier in the afternoon, when he’d been expected to fit his life on a single sheet of paper and hand it off for a filing cabinet. 

“What’s up?” Lance asked, “You got something against big bands?”

“No, on the contrary,” Keith folded his hands in his lap, “I love them. I used to go dancing a lot, but I haven’t really. Since I got back.”

“Ah,” Lance nodded. “There’s a lot I haven’t done since I got back.” 

Keith hummed, and even in all the heat and noise of the soda shop Lance felt the same kind of quiet calm they’d shared on the college steps descend between the two of them once more.

“One of the boys in our bunk brought a book called the Iliad with him to the front lines.” Keith lolled his head to look at Lance, “Do you know it?”

Lance shook his head mutely.

“Well it’s all about the Trojan war,” Keith continued, spreading his hands out in front of him like he was setting the scene. “About the Greeks laying waste to Troy because they wronged the Greeks like ten years before the book even starts. And there’s this great hero, Achilles. He’s half-god and could turn the tide of the battle in an instant, but he refuses to fight because he doesn’t know what they’re fighting for. He doesn’t like it. He only ends up going out when his best friend is killed, killed in a war Achilles could’ve ended a long time ago.”

He looked over at Lance, who was watching him intently. “That’s a terrible weight to bear. Apparently, Achilles ends up dying in the war, later, after the Iliad ends. But God, can you imagine the weight he would have lived with? I can. I think I feel it, a little bit. Heavy, and worn down. I think, even if Achilles had made it out alive, he wouldn’t have been up to dancing anymore.”

Lance nodded, “We went to war for barely three years and it’s going to be with us for the rest of our lives.”

“The propaganda made it look so good.” Keith muttered, “So easy, so glorious-- like you could be a hero too, just like Achilles. But the reality is so much different. Sure, the posters tell you you’re fighting for the free world, but the frontlines were mud and malaria. I saw more boys fighting cholera than I ever saw storming the imperial beaches. I never saw the glory.”

Lance sat back, taking in all that Keith had said, “You think they’d make us take a class on the Iliad?” he wondered aloud. "If we turned in those college registration forms?"

“Probably,” Keith snorted. “I wonder, would the professor for that English and American Literature class make Achilles out to be the shining hero, or a tragic figure? Would he paint him as some angry schmuck so driven by his heart that he couldn’t see the bigger picture, the glory of Greece?” Keith ran a finger around his dog tags, “A soldier who didn’t understand how glorious is his duty, and how necessary is his suffering.”

“That’s surprisingly deep,” Lance quipped, “It sounds almost like poetry.”

“Yeah well,” Keith shrugged, “The Iliad is one long poem. I didn’t read all of it. We all took turns passing it around the bunk, getting a good laugh at the idea of war making a hero out of a man.”

Lance kept his eyes on the man beside him, watching Keith watching the dancers, swinging round and round filled with a different kind of glory, the glory of youth. 

“You miss it,” he realized, voicing his thought aloud, “You miss being… who you were without the war.”

“Yeah,” the admission came easily for Keith, something he'd realized before he was even back stateside, “Who wouldn't? I was so much lighter, freer,” he gestured at the group in front of the jukebox with his chin, “I used to dance like that too.”

Lance laughed and slapped Keith on the back, “Come on Achilles, go and dance for me,” he grinned, “Let some of that weight get lifted.”

Keith stumbled out of his chair and found himself standing amidst the other college kids. None of them were exactly graceful, but then again Keith didn't think he would be either. He didn't focus on the swirl of bodies around him, listening instead to the swing of the bassline and joyful staccato of the melody. 

He made a few tentative quicksteps, his feet reminding the rest of him what dancing felt like. Keith didn't smile, but Lance knew smiles were hard to come by for men like them. He'd settle for the shuffle ball step, one-two quick moves Keith offered up. Lance was the one to smile, laughing from his seat at the counter and cheering Keith on. By the time the song ended, Keith felt breathless and buoyant. That had been Keith's first dance in a long time; he'd almost forgotten the euphoric feeling of being so light within his body.

Lance cocked his head as Keith landed in his stool, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you, soldier boy?”

Keith snorted, “Drink your malt, Lance.”

With both of them back in their seats the waitress came around again to drop off the bill, “You two strapping young men students up at the college?” She asked, a last ditch effort at conversation.  
She’d managed to step on the biggest landmine of them all, and the two men sat in ringing silence, the debris and shrapnel sitting unavoidable before them. 

Lance grimaced, “Isn't that the thousand dollar question?”

When neither Keith nor Lance offered up any further conversation she moved away, leaving the two of them sitting silent and heavy once again.

Keith huffed, hands idly tearing at one of the shop's paper napkins, “I think this might be the most quiet you've been all day.”

Lance hummed, his own nervous tic showing in his fiddling with the straw of his now-empty malt glass. “When I…”

He stopped, abruptly, pushing the drink away.

Lance paused to gather his thoughts, looking to speak his mind even though he might not find the words, “When I got my draft papers,” he began again, “I was scared. But I knew it was coming.”

They'd all known it was coming, their letterboxes sitting like guillotines ready to descend for the heads of every mother's first born with a letter as cutting as any blade. Keith still remembered how Shiro had hoped to be the one enscripted. His little brother's name listed on the envelope had killed Shiro, a descent merciless but not swift. Shiro had lingered in agony until Keith had come home again. 

Keith's own agony had been of a different kind, a kind which Lance now spoke of in a slow, wondering voice, “When I made it though basics, and I was stationed on some tiny godforsaken string of islands north of Australia, I was absolutely terrified out of my mind. But I told myself it would be over soon. That I didn’t have a choice. That I couldn't go back even if I wanted to.”

Keith gave a dark chuckle, “Yeah, ol' Uncle Sam doesn't really take no for an answer, does he?”

“No, no he really doesn't,” Lance sighed, “Not when it matters. But that's just it, I went to war because it mattered. I had no other choice. Now, all I have is choices. You saw the length of that class sheet!”

Lance was impassioned now, waving his hands around like Keith needed some kind of reminder at the overwhelming variety of futures before them.

“This is nuts,” Lance continued, “Deciding a college major, a career to be paid for on the government’s dime… I knew my days at war were numbered. But this? What I decide here dictates the rest of my life. What I decide here doesn't have an end date. This could be the job I'm stuck with every day for the next forty years.” He exhaled sharply, “And call me crazy, but that, somehow, is more frightening to me than the Doppler whine of an air raid by night.”

Lance leaned back in his chair, “I spent three years fighting for my life. I haven't given thought to how I'm going to spend the rest of it.”

There was a moment of quiet before Lance was caught by surprise at the sound of Keith's laugh. It was light, and musical, and entirely unexpected. 

“Mr. McClain, you are far more conscientious than I ever was,” Keith chuckled. “I fought for America, hell, I almost died for America.”

Keith opened his wallet and threw a couple of bills on top of their check, “I figure Lady Liberty can afford to wine and dine me a little, even if our relationship doesn't end up going anywhere.”

He stood, slinging his jacket over his shoulders. Lance followed, laughing, “What, you think I can just get a degree and then not use it?”

Keith reached into his back pocket and pulled out the limp, folded course offering, “I figure if you and I can talk to these college professors the way you and I talked to each other about the Iliad, we won't do too shabby. And if we actually find something useful along the way, so much the better.”

He handed the course offering to Lance, “How’d you like to go spend the government’s money?”

Lance thought about Keith, dancing on the floor of the soda shop and how that was a sight he’d like to see again, “I saw ballroom dancing on the course list. How do you feel about the tango, Mr. Kogane?”

**Author's Note:**

> My waxing poetic about the Iliad occurred because at the time I was in my English senior seminar class and we were doing the classics. Idk if you can believe but I'd actually never read the Iliad OR the Odyssey before, and imo we should always hold off on them until we're old enough to really vibe with all these mad lads. I would die for Patroclus but Achilles already did.
> 
> I am currently a part of two more zines, Ye Saga Continues: A Good Omens zine, and Midnight Star: An Aaravos fanzine. You can follow me on Twitter (velcowo) or Instagram (velvetcoatedwonder) for more frequent updates about my life, and thank you so much for reading!


End file.
